Welcome to Wondermore! Please click here to be directed to our new website.

We’ve changed our name from the Foundation for Children’s Books but not our mission. We continue to connect kids and teachers in under-served Boston classrooms with the dynamic creators of children’s books. We also continue to bring together teachers, librarians, and other children’s book lovers at our “What’s New in Children’s Books?” events.

We’re growing! That’s one of the reasons we’re changing our name. We are expanding our core program to more schools and deepening it by developing programs for Boston teachers, as well. More schools, more authors and more staff at Wondermore!

We want to say a huge THANK YOU to the creative professionals at Forge Worldwide, who helped us to make the change to Wondermore, all at no charge.

Join us as we launch our new name at the Boston Book Festival: Saturday, Oct. 25 in Copley Square, Boston. It’s an amazing day for book lovers young and old. Stop by the Wondermore booth to say hi!

And please join the conversation: Tweet the children’s book that made you #wondermore @wondermorebost

In addition to Gregory Maguire and Eric Velasquez, we are delighted to announce two more speakers: Liza Ketchum, who writes acclaimed middle-grade and young adult historical and other fiction, including her latest Out of Left Field, which is set in the much happier Red Sox season of 2004; and Susan Lynn Meyer, author of the middle-grade novel, Black Radishes, who will discuss her upcoming historical fiction picture book, a collaboration with illustrator Eric Velasquez.

And to top it off, two expert pickers for Best New Books for fall: Christian Porter, librarian at the Park School, and Terri Schmitz, owner of the Children’s Book Shop in Brookline.

Join us for a great morning!

Saturday, Nov. 8 from 8:30 a.m. (coffee, refreshments, book display and registration) to 12:30 p.m., when we’ll finish off with book signing. Event will be held at Lesley University’s University Hall on the Porter Square campus.

As we enjoy these last gorgeous days of summer, mark your calendar for a favorite fall event, “What’s New in Children’s Books?”

This is a fun morning, open to the public, that connects you with acclaimed authors and illustrators and with other children’s book lovers. The event includes a book display, book sales and signings, a “Best New Books for Fall” talk and refreshments. Our fall speakers include Gregory Maguire , author of Wicked, who will talk about his new middle-grade novel Egg & Spoon; Eric Velasquez, an award-winning illustrator and author of picture books; and more speakers still to come.

Barbara O’Connor visited 4th and 5th graders at the Mather School in Dorchester. Every visit with Barbara is special, but this one was particularly meaningful for the kids and teachers because Barbara had donated 100 copies of her novel “The Small Adventure of Popeye and Elvis” to the school back in the fall. Every student and teacher read the book, so in addition to being a visit with a “real” author, each session felt like a book club meeting with the author. Just like in an adult book club, students talked about their favorite scenes and characters, but unlike at most book club meetings, the author weighed in with her choices, too! Thank you Mather School and Barbara O’Connor for a truly special day together!

To the 1st graders at the Trotter School in Dorchester, Author/illustrator Jef Czekaj was the Cat’s Meow. He had them laughing, learning and taking cat naps together–all to a great beat, courtesy of his boom box. Jef’s creative energy and more »

The spring conference will take place on Saturday, April 12 @ 8:30AM-12:30PM

For this event we’ll be looking at “What’s New?” in Non-Fiction. Here’s a quick preview at our amazing line-up of speakers:

Steve Sheinkin makes history not only readable but page-turnable. He is the author of “Bomb: The Race to Build–and Steal–the World’s Most Dangerous Weapon,” which School Library Journal said “reads like an international spy thriller.” “Bomb” was a National Book Award Finalist, as well as a Newbery Honor book and Sibert Award winner. His just-published book, “The Port Chicago 50,” is a story of disaster, mutiny, and a civil rights showdown on a naval base during World War II.

Jason Chin takes complex subjects and makes them beautifully accessible for young readers. He is the author and illustrator of the acclaimed picture books Island: A Story of the Galapagos, Redwoods and Coral Reefs.

Kathryn Lasky is a favorite among young readers for her Guardians of Ga’Hoole series, among many other exciting works of fiction, including lots of historical fiction. But she’s also written over 20 non-fiction books for young people. She’ll talk about both and the differences and similarities between them.

Michael Tougias’ books focus on history and adventure stories. He combines the two in “The Finest Hours: The True Story of a Heroic Sea Rescue.” The book, originally published for adults, has just been released as a middle-grade book. He’ll talk about that process of conversion.

Melissa Stewart is the award-winning author of more than 150 non-fiction books for children. She’ll discuss some of her favorite new non-fiction books for spring.

More on these speakers and on event logistics to come. Meanwhile, feel free to register if you’re ready by clicking here. Hope to see you there!

Thanks to many donations from supporters like you, we’re thrilled to be setting a new goal of $18,000 for our Annual Appeal, which ends on January 31st, 2014. With your help, we can reach this new goal and inspire even more young readers and writers in urban schools.

At the beginning of November we had author/illustrator Jarrett Krosoczka visiting the JFK school in Jamaica Plain.

This visit was particularly special because it was in collaboration with 826 Boston and Jarrett was also kind enough to make a video greeting to his after-school fans at 826. He also visited Tenacre Country Day School in Wellesley, a recent addition to our private-public partnership program that helps to fund our work.

If you can believe it, in the same jam-packed day, we had arranged for author Ifeoma Onyefulu to visit the Mather School in Dorchester, as well as to The Park School in Brookline, as part of the public-private partnership program. Ifeoma is a Nigerian author who now lives in the United Kingdom, and her picture books are filled with her own beautiful photography depicting everyday life in Africa.

Ordinarily, the FCB purchases copies of the author’s books for the classroom so that by the time the author visits, the children are able to make a connection between what they have been reading and the person standing in front of them. What was particularly special about this visit is that Ifeoma’s U.S. distributer, Publisher’s Group West, donated over a hundred copies of her books to the Mather! Allowing kids to have the books in their hand and to be able to incorporate them into their classroom learning before they meet the author in person is so very valuable.

After a bit of a rest (4 schools, 2 authors, 1 day!), we were excited have arranged a visit to the Hernandez School with author Pat Mora.

This visit was the result of another successful collaboration with 826 Boston, and the visit was the perfect followup to a project they had been working on with the Hernandez, in which the students were writing their own poems inspired by Pat’s own work. Pat got to talk to the group about things like revision, writers as readers, and not being too critical of their ideas. It was a fantastic morning!